The Demons Within
by yumi michiyo
Summary: Harry has finally vanquished Voldemort but the mental trauma remains and he must battle to preserve his sanity. But how do you fight something that isn't real? PostHBP
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **As always, I own nothing. J.K. Rowling has everything, including the right to sell T-shirts.

**Author's Note: **Sorry for the long sabbatical, guys, but I was really depressed and had serious writer's block, not to mention problems in college. But excuses aside, I really had no right to deprive you.

Dedicated to all my loyal reviewers who have always provided me with constructive feedback for every chapter I posted. You know who you are.

"So, Mr. Potter, tell me about the nightmares again. How long have you been having them?"

The elderly psychiatrist leaned forward, biting on the arm of his gold-rimmed spectacles with an intent look on his face.

Harry looked wearily at him.

"As far back as I can remember."

Terrible memories, long suppressed, resurfaced then. Flashes of green light interspersed the anguished voices of his parents.

"You're having them again." It was a statement made with full confidence, the older man frantically scribbling in his unintelligible doctor's handwriting all over the notepad in his lap. Too drained to speak, Harry merely nodded and slumped back into his chair.

"From what you've been telling me, Harry – may I call you that? – yes, the traumatic experience of having your parents murdered by a madman has affected you deeply. It is not unusual for visions to become ingrained into your psyche – "

The rest of the doctor's words was lost in a vivid image of Cedric's murder before his eyes and Voldemort's subsequent revival, complete with his own screams.

_He was bound and gagged, tied to the tombstone of Tom Riddle Senior and the cauldron bubbled before him…Wormtail was slitting his forearm open and collecting the vital blood for Voldemort's rebirth…He was on his back, screaming as Voldemort used the Cruciatus curse on him repeatedly…_

For some reason, the visions had grown stronger after the Final Battle, when Voldemort was nothing more than a bad memory. The images not only troubled his sleep, but began to plague his waking hours, plunging him back into the horrors he had once experienced.

And they were taking their toll.

Harry had grown thin and pale, hardly venturing outside ever since a hallucination of the Final Battle and the shades of long-dead Death Eaters attacking him had caused him to blast an entire Muggle street into rubble. Thankfully, Hermione had been with him and she was able to prevent any casualties. He had escaped public scrutiny, thanks to his position as the hero of the war but a part of him had died that day.

Recently, he had taken to visiting a Muggle psychiatrist out of sheer desperation since magical means had no effect on him. It was a mark of how mentally exhausted he was that Harry had given his real name to Dr. Roberts.

" – and hence I would like to see you again next week, Harry, so we can further discuss the nature of this hallucinations. I think we've made good progress today."

With a dismissive wave of his pudgy hand, Dr. Roberts adjusted his spectacles and busied himself with his notepad. Harry got to his feet to leave, gripping the arm of his chair to steady himself.

"_You are weak, Potter."_

Harry's eyes widened as the form of Dr. Roberts and his chair smoothly transformed into the skeletal figure of Voldemort seated upon his throne. The pitiless red eyes surveyed him coolly.

"_You are the shadow of the man you once were. Do you think you have won? I have survived death at your hands once before, I can do so again. Lord Voldemort will rise again, more powerful and terrible than before…"_

"Shut up!" roared Harry, his wand in his hand by a reflex gesture. "You're dead!"

"_You wish I was," hissed the silky voice, filling Harry with icy-cold dread in spite of himself. "I am everywhere, and I have more powers than I did before."_

"_You left me to die, Harry," cut in an accusing voice. "My blood is on your hands."_

He spun around, white as a sheet to see Ron standing before him, blood soaking his clothes and trickling from the corner of his mouth.

The apparition stared at him, eyes filled with pure loathing.

"You don't exist!" shouted Harry, a trembling hand pointing at the two in turn. "I'm seeing things again, you're not here!"

Voldemort rose from his throne and the two figures advanced menacingly towards him. Harry fell back against the wall, his legs giving way.

"Stay back…stay back…" he murmured through dry lips, eyes bulging with fear and darting from either apparition.

"_You killed me!" shouted Ron._

"_I shall return!" whispered Voldemort. _

"Mr. Potter!"

Harry shook himself and squinted. Dr. Roberts was standing in front of him, holding a pitcher. Water dripped onto his cheek and he realised that he had emptied its contents over his head.

In an instant, he was on his feet, gripping the doctor's lapels.

"They were here, just now, in here," said Harry desperately, shaking the doctor in an effort to convince him of the truth. "I saw them, they appeared to me, they spoke to me."

"You are seriously mentally ill, Mr. Potter!" barked Dr. Roberts, gripping Harry's wrists. "I did tell you that you are prone to having vicious outbursts, due to the violent nature of your trauma! I am dangerously close to declaring you insane and having you locked away, save that you are sane enough to realise something is wrong with you!"

Something snapped in Harry.

"I am not mad!" he bellowed, taking one step forward, fists clenched. "I'm telling you, I saw them because they appeared to me!" He began pacing the room like a caged tiger, shoulders hunched, body tensed.

Dr. Roberts pressed the intercom button on the wall and spoke into it. "This is Dr. Roberts, get security into my office now. There is an unstable patient, I repeat, an unstable patient."

Harry wheeled on him, bloodshot eyes focused in hatred. Suddenly, the room vanished, to be replaced by a dark cave. Dumbledore lay screaming in agony at his feet, as the Inferi rose out of the water, seizing him with their rotting hands and dragging him down. He staggered, trying to force his mind to clear itself.

"I will not give in to myself."

**Author's Note: That has to be it, I'm going outstation tomorrow and I need my sleep. New updates coming soon!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter. I really wish I did, but nope. So I content myself with writing Fanfiction with my own little copy of him.

**Author's Note: **I do realize it's been a LONG LONG time since I last updated this story. Sorry! I was damn busy in college. Those of your who have been following international sports news, you might have heard that Singapore won the bid to host the world's first Youth Olympic Games. Yeah. I was involved in that. 

Harry's eyes flew open with a start.

_Where am I? _

The surroundings had changed – from what, he didn't recall – .

He was lying on a hard bed in an enclosed room. Opposite from the bed was a door.

Harry sat up – and clutched his head, wincing as stabs of pain lanced through his skull.

As though on cue, the door swung open and a vaguely familiar, pudgy figure strode in.

"Ah, you're awake, Mr. Potter," it remarked acidly. "As you're certainly in no condition to travel alone, I took the – ah, _liberty_ – of contacting a friend of yours."

A slight figure materialized at the pudgy figure's side. Harry blinked, and Hermione's familiar features slid into focus.

"Hermione," he muttered thickly, conscious of how hoarse he sounded.

She did not move to Harry's side immediately, exchanging low words with Dr. Roberts. Once he had departed, Hermione approached him, squeezing his hand gently.

"Are you alright, Harry? Dr. Roberts was saying that you were shouting…about Voldemort…and Ron…"

He looked into her eyes – and caught a glimpse of long-repressed pain within. Yet Harry could not be kind.

"I saw them. They kept coming for me. Ron…he said I killed him…"

Hermione buried her face in Harry's chest to stifle an involuntary sob and automatically, he wrapped his arms around her.

"It…wasn't your fault, Harry."

Eventually, Hermione composed herself sufficiently to force those words out. She pulled away from him abruptly, forcing Harry to meet her gaze. Fierce determination burned there, the same quality that had carried Hermione through the many trials the Trio had faced together.

"What you killed wasn't…_him_…"

Involuntarily, Harry's mind revisited the dark cave of his nightmares:

_A dark cave. Ron, Harry and Hermione were walking, wands raised. _

"_Any sign of him, get out," hissed Harry sharply, his face set. "It's between him and me."_

_Ron wheeled about sharply, fixing him with a famous Weasley glare._

"_You've got to be kidding me, mate. We're not about to turn and run like scared rabbits because of some stupid prophecy – "_

"Ron _– " began Hermione warningly._

_But she never finished her sentence._

_He never knew which one of them had did it. Someone's foot hit a rock, triggering the trap._

_And let all hell break loose._

_Dementors swarmed out of nowhere, filling the Trio with the familiar cold wave of despair. Caught of guard, it took a while for them to retaliate._

"Expecto patronum_!"_

_Hermione's otter was the first to materialize, scattering the first few Dementors. Ron's Jack Russell terrier and Harry's stag were quick to join it, destroying a few as they passed, exploding in black wisps of smoke._

_And then things went horribly wrong._

_A Dementor at the back of the horde glided up to the three Patronuses – ignoring its fleeing comrades – and seized Ron's._

_Before Harry, Ron and Hermione could react, it doffed its hood, revealing its horrible sucker and sucked the entire Patronus up._

_Harry's stag rushed into action, catching the creature where its waist should have been and sending it flying into the cave wall. Merely rebounding from it, the Dementor swooped back into the fray and seized the Patronus by the horns._

_A newly-conjured Patronus from Ron soared up and snapped at the Dementor's hood, forcing it to relinquish its hold. Hermione's otter seized the opportunity to claw at the sucker._

_Suddenly, a fresh, overwhelming feeling of utter misery swept over the Trio._

_The three Patronuses vanished, and the Dementor moved forward with lightning speed towards its chosen victim._

_In that heartbeat, Ron acted purely out of instinct, the culmination of years of dogged loyalty._

_He leapt in front of Harry, so the Dementor's scaly rotting arms embraced him instead._

"_RON! NO!" shouted Harry and Hermione simultaneously._

_He had no time to say anything, not even to scream, when the Dementor clamped its jaws over Ron's face._

_Tears poured down Harry's face as he frantically tried to reconjure his Patronus. _

Concentrate! _He tried to think of happy thoughts but all he could see was Ron laughing, young Ron on his broomstick with the wind through his hair…_

_Hermione was screaming, firing useless curses which flew harmlessly through the Dementor while Ron struggled violently in its Kiss._

_Abruptly, Ron's legs stopped kicking and the Dementor cast him aside, like a useless rag doll._

_His eyes were wide open, staring vacantly into space. Drool trickled slowly from the corner of his mouth. Clearly, nobody was there anymore._

_With a burst of emotion, a massive stag and otter, twice the size of any Patronus ever conjured and shining with the radiance of the Sun, exploded from the ends of Harry's and Hermione's wands and attacked the Dementor._

_It imploded with a rush of inky black wisps, taking the two supercharged Patronuses with it._

_Harry and Hermione fell to their knees beside Ron's sprawled figure, emotion heaving in their chests, too stunned to cry. _

With a start, Harry jerked back into the present as he became aware of Hermione's sobs filling the enclosed room. A cold breeze on his face made him realize he'd been crying too.

Roughly wiping his face with the sleeve of his shirt, Harry tenderly stroked Hermione's hair in a feeble attempt to calm them both.

Unwillingly, his mind flashed back to the sequence of fateful events:

_Time had passed since the incident in the cave._

_Ron was seated on the veranda of The Burrow, a blanket tucked around his legs. Silently, Harry and Hermione entered the house and Mrs. Weasley came forward to meet them._

"_Is it over?" she asked in hushed tones._

_Harry swallowed, then nodded. "He vanished into the ocean before my eyes. We never retrieved a body."_

_She clasped her hands over her mouth, tears welling up in her eyes. "Thank Merlin – "_

"_How is he?" interjected Hermione gently, who had up till then been silent._

_Mrs. Weasley suddenly burst into tears._

"_I can't take it anymore," she sobbed, chest heaving with emotion. "That's not my son out there, in that chair…that's not my Ron…I can't bear to see those empty eyes…"_

_They took their turns in comforting her before stepping out onto the veranda._

_Ron stared straight ahead, oblivious to their arrival._

"_Hey, mate," said Harry softly. "It's over. He's gone for good."_

_No reply. No indication that he ever heard._

_A tear slid slowly down Hermione's cheek. Bending forward, she squeezed one of the slack hands resting on his lap. "Don't worry, Ron. We'll take care of you."_

_A trickle of drool ran down his cheek and she mopped it with the towel that hung at the side of the chair, specifically for that purpose._

_Harry swore, and stormed from them as more tears ran down Hermione's face. It wasn't easy at all for them to see him, once so full of life, in this condition: an empty husk. Mrs. Weasley was right. Ron was gone._

_Later that evening, the entire Weasley family plus all of Ron's friends gathered in The Burrow to discuss something of grave importance: setting Ron free. Not everyone was for the idea._

"_Are you telling me you're going to_ _**kill**__ Ron?!" roared Dean Thomas, blue eyes widening with righteous fury. _

"_That – __**husk**__ – out there isn't Ron anymore, Dean!" yelled Harry, banging his fist on the table. "Ron is long dead. We are setting his body free!"_

_With a final glare, Dean stormed out into the night, swearing never to speak with Harry nor Hermione again._

_Eventually, everyone reached a consensus and took their turns going out and saying goodbye. Last of all were Harry and Hermione._

_When they were done, Harry raised his wand slowly, tears streaming down and pointed it at Ron._

"Avada kedavra_!"_

_The funeral service was modest, considering it was for one of the greatest heroes of the Light. That night, Harry's nightmares began._

**Author's Note: **That's it for this chapter. Inspired by a distant relative of mine who was terminally ill and whose immediate family opted for euthanasia.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **As usual, I own nothing. For proof, if I owned Harry and his world, I'd be the multi-millionaire author churning out the big fat novels. Instead here I am posting on Note: Okay, despite being super busy in school, I'll be trying my level best to post regularly once a week. Maybe more, but certainly not less. 

Harry shivered as the ghosts of the past fell away. Time had passed, he was sure of that. Hermione had detached herself from his arms and was standing by the door.

"Come on, Harry," she said gently. "Time to go home."

Home? What was home to him? A long time ago, when he was a idealistic young boy, Sirius had said to him: "Home is where your heart is, Harry."

Sirius was dead. Many others were dead. His heart was broken, the fragments lost to the sands of time, slipping away with the memories of the dead. His godfather was nothing but a dim memory now, when things were so much simpler.

Unsteadily, he slipped from the bed and shuffled over to the door. Harry walked out, not looking back, out of the plush waiting room, ignoring the looks he got from the people he passed.

Hermione grabbed his hand and pulled him into a dark alleyway once they were out of sight. With a faint pop, they Disapparated and Apparated almost instantly in front of a handsome old building halfway across London.

The protective charms laid on 12 Grimmauld Place still lingered long after the casters were dust. Together, Harry and Hermione had managed to remove some of the most troublesome ones, including the Dumbledore's ghost which lurked in the hallway and wove new ones which ensured that the house maintained its status as one of the most secure in Britain, comparable only to the Ministry of Magic itself.

Inside, it was significantly less dusty than it had once been. The portrait of Mrs. Black, once the bane of so many visitors to the house, had finally been removed after Harry, in a fit of anger, blew out the entire portion of wall with his wand.

Harry wearily threw his jacket at the clothes stand, which caught it neatly. "I don't think I can do this anymore, Hermione," he muttered, striding into the kitchen.

In reply, she seized his shoulders with surprising strength. "Look at me, Harry," she commanded, fixing his eyes. "It's. Not. Your. Fault."

He broke free of her, running a hand through his hair. "They're following me everywhere. They won't leave me alone. There! He's back!"

Harry was aware he was rambling but the appearance of a black-robed figure at the kitchen door convinced him that he was sane.

"_Thought I was dead? You deceive yourself once again, Potter. I will return."_

"SHUT UP!"

Harry roared the words, his wand appearing in his hand. Out of the corner of his vision, he was vaguely aware of Hermione doing something with her wand.

"_Stupefy_!"

His mouth moved but strangely, nothing came out. Harry felt something hit the small of his back and everything went black.

"_Do you love Hermione?"_

_The unexpected question caught Harry off guard. It was night, deep in the forests of Albania. He and Ron were taking the night watch while Hermione slept in the tent. The next day, they were due to explore a nearby cave which was giving off a lot of magical energy._

"_Of course I do," answered Harry._

_Ron scrutinized him, an act which made him feel uncomfortable. Busying himself with poking the fire, Harry tried to ignore him the best he could. _

"_Yes. You do."_

_This time, Harry was completely taken aback._

"_I don't! I only love Hermione as I would my own sister! We've been friends for so long…" His protests died away as Ron shot him a death glare._

"_Alright," he admitted, cracking under the intense scrutiny. "But I couldn't – We wouldn't – "_

"_I knew you wouldn't. You wouldn't want to do anything to hurt me."_

_Malice underlaid the seemingly calm words._

_Harry got to his feet._

"_Ron – "_

_Ron had already risen to his feet and was walking into his tent. "Don't bother, Harry. We know each other very well already. I know you'll do what's right."_

_They did not speak until a few hours later, the Trio hiked up the hill towards the mysterious cave. Harry took his time, watching Hermione walk in front of him, lost in memory._

_Who would he choose: his best friend, or his best friend? _

_Harry resolved to tell her: tell Hermione everything and then walk away. Leave behind everything they had built. And preserve his and Ron's friendship. It was but a small price to pay for years of loyal, devoted support._

_His soul was a poor exchange for everything he was about to lose._

_Harry decided to begin once he stepped into the cave. Energy pulsated within, and he knew death lurked within. He had to save them, to get them away to live happily ever after. _

"_Any sign of him, get out," hissed Harry sharply, his face set. "It's between him and me." Resolutely, he let no hint of the turbulent emotions within show through the mask._

_Ron wheeled around…_

_Approximately two hours later, Harry's world upended itself._

Harry awoke screaming. Ron was there, torturing him while Voldemort laughed. But what chilled him to the core was that Hermione was there. She had never appeared in the nightmarish parallel universe that he inhabited. But it all changed now.

She was beside him, writhing as Ron and Voldemort did unspeakable things to the both of them.

As he sat there, panting, eyes wide with shock, the real Hermione rushed in. Before she could say anything, Harry suddenly enveloped her in his arms.

"You're safe…I'm so glad that you're alright…I can't let them hurt you…" he murmured, his face in her hair.

Startled, Hermione stiffened, then relaxed into his embrace. Harry felt the comforting presence of her hands around his neck, easing the tension from that knot of fear deep inside him.

Then Harry took a step further.

Cupping Hermione's face with his hands, he tilted it upwards and kissed her.

The effect was electrifying.

Harry felt something stirring inside, something that had stayed dormant for far too long. Just as he was thinking: "_What would this do to our friendship?",_ he received the answer.

Hermione was kissing him back.

The pressure of her hands had gone from comfortable to heavy, pulling him closer to her. Exhilarated, Harry's hands took on a life of their own, roaming all over her torso.

It was going to be a long night. Free, for a change, of the specters shadowing Harry's life.


End file.
